Pirate Bay Co-Founders Lose Appeal Against Convictions

A Swedish court has upheld a ruling against three co-founders of file sharing website The Pirate Bay, increasing their fine from 30 million to 46 million Swedish kroner.

The court of appeal ruled that Fredrik Neij, Peter Sunde and Carl Lundström remain guilty of “assisting copyright infringement” through their website, but has cut their prison terms from a year to ten months, eight months and four months respectively, Swedish news site The Local reports.

The fourth co-founder, Svartholm Warg, is yet to have his case reviewed due to illness.

Reuters reports the leader of the Pirate Party Rick Falkvinge as saying: "This case was politically motivated from the start and (the problem) must be solved politically.”

"This doesn't mean anything for The Pirate Bay and it doesn't mean anything for similar sites. File sharing is increasing every day and the only thing this means is that more and more people will try to hide what they are doing on the Internet."